Empire of the East (2020) is one of a series of settings based on the work of authors Gygax included in Appendix N (Leiber’s Lankhmar is officially licensed, and Chained Coffin is a clear riff on Manly Wade Wellman’s Silver John; their massive take on Vance’s Dying Earth has also come out recently). I won’t lie, it doesn’t live up to the standard of those others, all of which have shown me a new way to approach and play DCC.

That’s OK! Because I love this book for completely different reasons. Namely: it functions pretty much exactly like one West End Games’ old Star Wars sourcebook, particularly the ones for the Heir to the Empire trilogy. Except, you know, its for Fred Saberhagen’s Empire of the East trilogy. It’s a sort of sourcebook that has mostly fallen out of favor, probably because it is only tangentially useful for play, but I miss them because they were hella fun to read. The same can be said about this book, which was on the side table all the while I read Saberhagen’s novels.

You’ve got looks at the magic, lost tech and the world in general. You can take Orcus and ARDNEH as patrons. There’s a section on monsters. My favorite is the Personalities chapter, because it has portraits of the book’s characters. And my goodness, what a stable of artist to unleash on Saberhagen. That Ian Miller cover is just divine. That Russ Nicholson portrait of Ekuman is great too.

Great DCC setting? Probably not. Amazing resurrection of the ’90s sourcebook format? Hell yea!